Bringing in competition for Drew Lock makes absolutely no sense

Adding a journeyman signal caller to the QB room may sound like a good idea, but the reality is that it wouldn't make any difference

BY JAMES MERILATT

Mar 15, 2021, 6:19 AM

Follow on Google News

Watch: Nuggets trade Watson — Is the Championship window closing? | Stokley and Evans with Mark Schlereth | 9 mins

It’s trendy to say that the Broncos need to bring in competition for Drew Lock. The reasons seem obvious.

The 24-year-old quarterback struggled in 2020, throwing a league-leading 15 interceptions in just 13 starts. Denver doesn’t have a proven backup, with Brett Rypien and Jeff Driskel behind Lock on the depth chart. And in sports, competition always sounds like a good thing.

But when it comes to the quarterback position, it’s not. At all.

First of all, the reasons most often cited for bringing in a veteran to push Lock just don’t add up. There’s no evidence to suggest that it’s necessary.

Yes, Rypien and Driskel are inexperienced, with 10 combined starts. But that didn’t hurt the Broncos in 2020. It didn’t bite them one bit. The three games that Lock didn’t start last season wouldn’t have been any different if a veteran was serving as Denver’s backup.

Kendall Hinton was forced into action when every quarterback was placed on the COVID-19 list, Rypien beat the Jets and Driskel lost to the Buccaneers. The oddity of a QB-less game would’ve been the same, anyone would’ve beaten New York and the Broncos weren’t beating the eventual Super Bowl champs with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tyrod Taylor or Andy Dalton behind center.

Admittedly, Rypien and Driskel weren’t threats to take Lock’s job, whereas one of those veterans would be. But that wouldn’t necessarily make the young quarterback play better. In fact, it might make him play worse.

It’s not as though Lock wasn’t putting forth an effort last season, where the possibility of getting benched would’ve lit a fire under him. That’s what competition would do, but there wasn’t a single rumbling during the season that this was needed.

On the other hand, playing in fear of losing his job could cause Lock to play too cautiously. A QB who is afraid to make mistakes becomes very conservative. Memories of Case Keenum during the second half of the 2018 season come to mind.

In other words, having a veteran backup behind Lock wouldn’t have made any difference in 2020. So why do it in 2021?

An argument can be made that someone like Fitzpatrick, Taylor or Dalton would give the Broncos a better chance to win. That’s possibly true, but it begs one gigantic question: Win what?

Denver finished 5-11 last season. They missed the playoffs by six games. It’d be a stretch, to put it mildly, to suggest that a journeyman quarterback would’ve made up that difference.

More than likely, a different signal caller might’ve improved the Broncos record by a game or two. Heck, maybe they even get to 8-8. Maybe.

But that’s not the end goal. That’s not cause for celebration. In fact, it would put the franchise in NFL purgatory.

Being mediocre is the worst thing a team can be, especially if it’s not a step in an upward trajectory. An 8-8 season with a young quarterback is building toward something. One with an aging veteran simply turns a top-10 draft choice into one in the late teens.

If the Broncos finished .500 with Lock, it’d be a step in the right direction. If they go 8-8 with Dalton, it’s a total waste of everyone’s time.

Except for maybe Vic Fangio’s. And that’s all the more reason not to go down the veteran backup route.

The head coach is 12-20 during his first two seasons at the helm. He’s desperate to win games. Going 8-8, which would be a three-game improvement over last season, might just save his job.

As a result, he’s going to play for the short-term, not the long-term. He’s going to worry about today, with no regard for tomorrow.

That’s how Lock ends up on the bench for half of the games, where he won’t develop and the team won’t learn what they have in the quarterback, in favor of a more trustworthy veteran. Fangio would be tempted to make that switch, as a couple of games could mean the difference between him keeping or losing his job.

Such a season wouldn’t get the Broncos any closer to their ultimate goal. At the end of a .500 season where a veteran QB started half of the games, Denver wouldn’t have any clarity about their future at the most-important position in sports.

That’s why any change other than a significant upgrade makes no sense for the Broncos. They’re better off to let Lock have another year.

If the quarterback blossoms, that’s great news; they’re set. If he falters, that’s not the worst-case scenario; they’ll have a high draft choice and will know that they need to move on.

Short of trading for Deshaun Watson or Russell Wilson, or drafting one of the top four QBs coming out this year, that’d be the wise route. And it could be derailed by bringing in so-called “competition.”

If the Broncos truly believe they need to push Lock, then they have their answer; he’s not the long-term solution. There isn’t a legitimate QB in the league who needed such a nudge in order to turn into a big-time player.

In 2019, the Titans brought in Ryan Tannehill to compete with Marcus Mariota. They should’ve just moved on when they made that decision.

Instead, they wasted the first six games of the season letting Mariota play his way out of the job. Getting “pushed” didn’t make him any better; it made him worse.

And it hurt the team. Tennessee went 2-4 in those games before finally switching to Tannehill. It was a total waste of time.

Bringing in someone to push Lock would have the same result in Denver. It would only delay the inevitable.

Competition sounds like a good idea. But when it comes to the quarterback position, it’s a sign that it’s time to go in another direction.